The University of Michigan Law School, in an effort to ameliorate the effects of The Solomon Amendment upon its LGBT students last year established a fellowship ($3,500) in the name of Perry Watkins to be granted to a law student who summer interns for an organization promoting LGBT civil rights.
I applied for the fellowship, despite my concern that I would not be a likely candidate. I thought that my age and my previous financial successes (this, despite my being arguably more needy than many of my younger peers) might preclude me from consideration. I was wrong.
I received the following email Friday morning:
Thank you for applying for the Perry Watkins Fellowship. We had a good pool of applicants and I'm pleased to tell you that we've awarded you the fellowship for the summer of 2006. You crafted a great application and the Law School is happy to support you in your summer work. Please let us know by March 15th what LGBT organization you will be working with.
I am pleased, honored and humbled to have been selected.
The text of my application is below the fold.
Describe briefly (in 300 words or less) where you are applying for summer positions and what experience you hope to gain.
I have either already applied, or am in the process of applying at the following organizations:
Lambda Legal, Los Angeles or Chicago
National Center for Lesbian Rights, San Francisco or Tampa
Human Rights Campaign, Washington DC
Sylvia Rivera Law Project, New York
Transgender Law Center, San Francisco
Expected experience:
Each of the above organizations deal exclusively with LGBT issues. Two of them, the Sylvia Rivera Law Project and the Transgender Law Center, deal exclusively with transgender legal issues while the others have a transgender specific element within their organizations. It is my hope and belief that working with any one of these organizations will provide me with the opportunity to work with that under represented element of the LGBT community. I hope to gain experience in dealing with families and individuals as they try to navigate their way through the ill-defined law surrounding transgenders in our country. More specifically, I would hope to be able to learn more about family law as it pertains to LGBT families and the techniques that practicing attorneys have developed to help clients live their lives and achieve some measure of social equality or justice.
Each of the above positions are unpaid internships (with the possible exception of HRC, which has yet to be determined) and are the only places that I am considering for summer work.
Describe briefly (in 500 words or less) whether and how you intend to incorporate LGBT issues into your career.
LGBT issues are the primary reason for my attending law school in the first place. I have personally observed and experienced the inequities of the legal system as it pertains to LGBT individuals and am committed to providing advocacy for this community with the hope that such inequities might be reduced or, at a minimum, provide some individuals and their families the opportunity to live routine, quiet lives as unaffected by the surrounding ignorance and bias of society as possible. At this stage of my legal training, my primary interest is in Family Law. Issues impacting LGBT families, such as marriage, adoption (including second partner adoption), child custody in divorce cases, etc. disproportionately impact such families negatively. Although same-sex marriage garners most of the headlines (and has spawned such legislation as DOMA at the federal and several states level) it is only one experience of marriage (or denial thereof) in our communities. There is much misunderstanding of marriage laws as they affect (or perhaps are affected by) transgender marriages – both those entered into prior to a gender transition as well as those entered into post-transition.
Describe briefly (in 500 words or less) a past experience that has led to your interest in working on LGBT issues this summer.
During my own divorce, my ex-spouse filed a motion to have my parental rights terminated, purely on the basis of my gender transition. I was able to defeat this motion, in large part due to my own willingness to offer other concessions in the divorce proceedings (such as permanent periodic alimony). But, it became apparent to me that my own attorney was ineffective and inexperienced in handling such cases. Moreover, despite my being referred to him through a gay-friendly attorney network, I believe that he had no understanding of transgenderism whatsoever.
A couple of years thereafter, I had the opportunity to meet and become friends with a young man named Michael Kantaras. Michael, a female-to-male transsexual was in the process of separation from his wife and was seeking counsel on initiating divorce and custody proceedings for his two children. I realized then again that there was a terrible dearth of resources available, and those that did exist were scattered widely across the country. He was able eventually to connect with Karen Doering of the National Center for Lesbian Rights who was able to assist him. Michael won at the trial court level, in front of a judge who took the time to learn about transsexuality, but lost at the appellate level when the court ruled that a transsexual can’t change the sex assigned to them at birth. This follows a pattern set first in Texas (Littleton) and then in Kansas (Gardnier).
This has reinforced my commitment to serve this, my, community. I see the ability to work this summer in this field as both a gift and an important learning opportunity to help me further this commitment and bring the possibility of peace and justice to lives already torn apart.